The larger Hooligan is making a large batch of chocolate chip cookies. I provided him with a recipe, ingredients, and an apron (which he eschewed). Then I fled the scene. He is playing Led Zepplin at a very high volume. I barely heard one crashing breaking sound and one "Oh Shit!" over the throbbing bass and yowling lyrics. I am sure this is exactly how he feels when I am cooking and playing La Traviotta. I am lurking in the farthest corner of my house and wishing I had a much larger house. Perhaps one with a completely separate guest apartment. One of us could live there.
I had a dream that I acquired a sweet, fat daschund--not a dog I would choose in my waking life, but in the dream I was delighted! So cuddly! So wriggly! So grateful for my attention!
Then I woke up to this:
He is not very emotive. Most dogs ingratiate themselves: wagging and rolling onto their back and waving their feet in the air. Anything to demonstrate that you are, in their doggy opinion, the supreme being. This may be why I like dogs. Who doesn't like to be worshipped?
Magnus does not subscribe to this approach. His method is one of silent insistence. He generally just stares at me until I divine what he wants: in this case, to get out of my nice warm bed and let him out. He is like a 100 pound cat. Only instead of purring, he drools. Perhaps his job is to keep me humble.
My friend and her very tall charming spouse spent their anniversary treasure hunting in the junk shops and thrift stores across town. I almost fell over when she told me that.
He thrifts with you? I asked. Like, willingly? On a fall weekend? You don't have to bribe him with sexual favors? Does he actually look for stuff? Or does he just lurk and grimace and check the time and the football score whenever he thinks you're not looking.
No, he likes it, she said. He thinks it's fun. And look what we scored. (Hodgepodge of mid century cool objects.)
I was telling the (tall, but not that tall) Man who lives in my house about this. I was excited! I had a proposal:
I think we should swap dates, I explained. Like I will go to a football game with you, and I will get my rah rah on. I will pay attention and jump up and down. I will try to follow the action. I will ask questions and strive for understanding. I will give a shit about a bunch of grown men fighting in a ritualized manner for many hours over a ball. Then when it's my turn, you could go to an estate sale and a couple of thrift shops with me one weekend afternoon. You could pretend to be really into it, and take pictures of the ugly lamps. You could dig around in the basement and the garage for tools. Maybe we'd find a rad polyester tuxedo in a 44 long--that would be the ultimate! It could happen! We would have a blast!
The Man gave me what our friend Linda calls the "curious dog" look: head tilted, brows furrowed. Did you say you'd get your rah rah on? You can't even keep track of the score when it's your kids' game. You have no inner cheerleader. What you have is an inner librarian/bag lady. We need to just stick with going to the movies.
He may have a point. I think it's my turn to pick the movie. I'm feeling like a Merchant-Ivory costume drama is in order...
(It should be noted: My friend also actually likes football, so maybe she earned a thrift enthusiast-spouse, karmically speaking.)
I lie abed for approximately 30 minutes longer than The Man Who Lives In My House. This chafes his hide. Particularly since I moan, "Coffee!?!" in a pitiable but demanding manner if he doesn't bring me a cup posthaste. Then I ask if the newspaper has arrived. He rolls his eyes, stomps to the front step, brings it into our room, and tosses it on the bed.
He has taken to muttering as he goes about this business. I catch fragments:
"is is worth it? hard to say."
He hands me my cup and a gaze at him blearily. I can't really express my gratitude properly until the caffeine enters my system.
He heads to the bathroom to shave. I overhear the following:
"Maybe when we get old I"ll get infirm first, then yeah. She has to wipe my butt. But if she loses it first, I'm hosed."
Just finished: Where'd You Go, Benadette?, by Maria Semple. Awesome. So inventive. Why didn't I think of that?
Currently reading: 90% Of Everything. Always wondered.
Re-read: The Historian. Forgot how terrifying it is. Terribly good but now I have to fall asleep with the light on, which gives me a headache and drives The Man Who Lives In My House up the wall.
Also I have resumed my knitting project, which is a swedish pattern called the "4 movie sweater." Four very long movies, maybe. I am using very fat yarn and big needles. If I were a faster knitter I might have finished in in time for last winter. It is just possible (if I continue to abstain from Words...) that I will complete it in time for this one. It is also possible that it will turn out to be completely the wrong size in which case someone will get a hand knit sweater for Christmas. Or Easter.
As you may have gathered, I was playing A LOT of Words With Friends.
Cuteness Quotient: Mostly. If you like that sort of thing
Spelling Skills: Epic fail.
"A dishtowl was danling ovr edg of countr, cleerly ment 4 me, as it had bnn usd by 1 of the smllr personx 2 cln up bakon grees i did my prt to help clean by takin towl outside and devoring entirlee. flavor was delishus but am feel rathr bloted. mae snoooz 4 a minut b4 resoomng sqrrl wach"
We caught lots of Dungeness crab while we were at the coast. The Smaller Hooligan is nuts for fishing in any form. So Crab was the featured (but not the only) menu item for our last night. We also had rice, and beans, broccoli and fresh rockfish (also from our fishing expedition). I mention this so that we all understand that no one was force fed crab.
My five year old nephew, Señor Cupcake, would like you to know that crab is horrible. It is so horrible that when a big platter of it is placed on the table you might want to run howling out of the room and spend the rest of the meal hollering and kicking the wall. That is what he did and he is very surprised more of us don't do the same.
We pretended not to notice the ruckus. Actually, that is not true. We laughed, which made him madder. We are mean mothers, but what do you expect? After the fisticuffs incident between the Hooligans, our nerves were shot. More crab for us. And more wine. Stat.
After the crab was cleared away Senor slunk down stairs and ate a few surly spoonfuls of beans and broccoli. He was very put out.
Interestingly, his meltdown inspired my previously recalcitrant and grumpy hooligans to become good pals again. Having someone else act up brought on a rush of brotherly love.
Is this what it's like to have three children? With just two, you always can consider knocking their heads together if they don't stop squabbling. My mother threatened to knock our heads together at least once daily. It was an empty threat, but it got her point across: Abbey and I were really getting on her nerves. This would be difficult to do with 3. You would need a nanny to help you do the knocking in an evenly distributed manner. And if you had a nanny, you might not be in the house, listening to the squabbling. It would be the nanny's problem.
(Note: I have never knocked my children's heads todgether. I have thought about it though. I have thought long and hard. I would be a terrible nanny. Do not hire me.)
Later Gump gave everyone ice cream cones. My sister and I refrained from pointing out that when we were children, he NEVER would have let us have dessert if we had thrown a fit during dinner. Of course I don't remember us throwing a fits during dinner, even when it was really putrid, like lima beans and shepherd's pie. Maybe we were afraid they would knock our heads together .
I think our children's shenanigans give our parents enormous satisfaction. I still think my mother is slipping the larger hooligan cash to give me a hard time. Possibly lots of cash. He loves her shepherd's pie. He says I should make it. Grand children are sweet revenge.
The Man Who Lives In My House is on a trip to Ireland with his dad. They are exploring their roots and drinking Guiness.
To pass the time until his return, I packed up my fatpants, the hooligans, some skateboards and we went to the beach with my side of the family for a few days. We partook of the usual beach family things: taffy, sand castles, crabbing, crabbiness (Part of the teen hooligan/mom dynamic. What fun.)
Overall a good time was had.
There were a few minor incidentents to mar our familial bliss. Like a teeny fistfight. Only one punch was landed by the fist of the Larger Hooligan onto the nose of the Smaller one.
Unfortunately for the larger Hooligan (who was fed up with having things chucked at him) the Smaller Hooligan has a bit of a trick nose that bleeds quite easily--like sometimes just from a sneeze. This does not look good when your mother comes downstairs to see what all the yelling is about and finds the younger child bleeding (slightly) into a dishcloth.
Even if you start limping and hollering about how your knee is probably broken from having a toy car thrown at it, you will not garner much sympathy.
Keeping in mind that it takes two to tango, or fight, I confiscated the cell phone AND iPod belonging to the Larger and Smaller Hooligan, respectively. They are locked in my glove box and will stay there until The Man Who Lives In My House gets back. He will be given a heroes welcome, you may be sure.
In the meantime I pointed out that neither Hooligan has spent as much time reading this summer as one would hope. It is possible that they are becoming illiterate cretins. This is unthinkable. Cretins I can accept, but they must be literate.
So they read. But they got me back by refusing to read anything but the stash of Us and Life & Style magazines that were at the beach house.
They are now veritable fonts of information about celebrity hijacks and scandals. They have told me all about Miley Cyrus' and Amanda Bynes' stints in Rehab, Madonna's gold teeth, and Christina Aguilara's plastic surgery. They know way too much about the Real Housewives of New Jersey, too.
They also had a few questions: What is rehab? What does DUI spell? What is plastic surgery? Why would you want gold teeth? What is reality TV? Why do people watch it? How can we get a show?
I had to give this all some thought--how do you answer these questions fully, accurately AND appropriately? I did my best.
So It surprises me to be in the position of recommending utter trash as a fabulous starting point for Cretinous family discussions on long car trips. Happy trails.
Keri: "So you were in Portland! Did you shop? What did you buy? What did you buy for me?"
Me: "I did shop, but it was not especially interesting. I was on a mission for bras. Do you know how hard it is to find 36A bras? Especially 36As that are not stuffed with a bunch of foam to make your boobs appear larger. I just want normal bras that will prevent my small boobs from falling to my waist. I don't wish to look like I've had plastic surgery."
Keri: "I do not suffer from this problem. Did you find some?"
Me: "Yes! One black, one white, and one electric blue. And I got these great pants. They are not tight! Or Skinny! I am over skinny pants. I am all about fat pants."
Keri: "No! That is a terrible Idea! We do not need fat pants, what we need is a diet."
Me: "Screw the diet. I love these pants. My ass crack is safe from exposure and my muffin top is being embraced, not squeezed. Now wouldn't you like another donut?"
It appears to be made from a couple of bathroom throw rugs. The garage sale hostess from whom I purchased this awesome garment ( $5) told me she bought it in Paris in 1970, and it was a big hit for the subsequent decade in San Fransisco, where she lived.
I guess its next phase will be as a big hit in middle school.
I guess having a conformist child would be boring. But I wish he would ask before borrowing my clothes
It is a good thing his feet are so big. My shoes are safe.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Selective interpretations
The Man Who Lives in My House took the Hooligans to see Elysium. They came home exhilarated.
"It was better than I was expecting," said the man who lives
in my house. "It was very political."
I had elected to stay home as movies with lots of explosions stress me out. "Really?" I said, "What
was the message?"
"Blowing stuff up!" exclaimed the smaller hooligan.
"No," said the Man Who Lives in My house, "The message was that there should be universal health care and equal access to resources. It was anti elitist."
The Man Who Lives In My House (demonstrating his extraordinary capacity for empathy): "The republicans must be really bummed right now. The've had so many mediocre people."
Me (lying on the floor, stretching my hamstrings be cause I ran 3 miles uphill today, people. UPHILL):
"I need wine."
TMWLIMH: "How will you drink it down there? Shall I order up an IV?"
Me: "No, just a bendy straw, like Sarah Palen. And as for republican mediocrity, I don't feel bad for them in the least! This is a DEMOCRACY. They CHOSE those people."
